


light as straw and brittle as a bird

by olivebranchesandredwine



Series: I wanna hold your hand [4]
Category: Schitt's Creek
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Father-Son Relationship, Gen, Holding Hands, Introspection, Parent-Child Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-25
Updated: 2019-08-25
Packaged: 2020-09-26 11:14:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,394
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20388781
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/olivebranchesandredwine/pseuds/olivebranchesandredwine
Summary: “I’m here, son. For whatever you need,” he whispers, willing his own voice not to crack as the tears well up in his eyes. “I’m here.”  Johnny comforts David after the BBQ





	light as straw and brittle as a bird

**Author's Note:**

  * For [missgeevious](https://archiveofourown.org/users/missgeevious/gifts).

> CW: Premature birth, which is a big trigger for me, but not enough to be a tag wrangled on AO3. 
> 
> Title from Elton John's "The Last Song"

Johnny’s had the better part of a lifetime to learn the best ways to comfort Moira. He knows that, to the casual observer, she’s a special brand of _too much_, but Johnny sees her in a way that no one else ever has. Or ever will. For nearly 40 years, Johnny has been the lucky soul to witness Moira Rose in all her brilliant, complicated glory. He’s been there, standing just outside the frame, as she’s dazzled on red carpets; he’s been right there in the front row, leading the standing ovations. Johnny has been blessed to witness Moira’s highest highs. And he’s also been the one to hold her through the lowest of lows. He was there, holding vigil by her bedside, after the first overdose—and all the ones that followed. He has always been there, to hold her, to love her, to give her something, _someone_ to cling to in the darkest of nights.

Well, not _always, _Johnny remembers. That one night he wasn’t. The night that haunts him.

Moira’s first pregnancy had gone as smoothly as Johnny could’ve hoped for; for the first two trimesters, her biggest complaints were about the logistics of disguising the pregnancy on _Sunrise Bay. _If he were being completely honest with himself, Johnny would’ve admitted to a twinge of disappointment that she didn’t act how he thought pregnant women were supposed to act. No strange cravings sending him on midnight quests for pickles and ice cream; no grabbing his hands to place on her belly to feel the baby move; she didn’t suddenly _need _him the way he’d thought, expected, _hoped _for. Pregnant, she was still that wild, aloof, beautiful Moira Rose, the woman he had fallen head over heels in love with nearly a decade before, only now she was even more breathtaking because she was carrying their child. Johnny loved her fiercely and fully and would do anything in his power for her.

Perhaps because she remained so utterly independent, so dedicated to her job and charity work,it didn’t even occur to Johnny that he shouldn’t make that trip. Her due date was still months away; they hadn’t even started the Lamaze classes that he had finally convinced Moira to take. “John, dear, I plan to experience childbirth through a blissfully medicinal fog,” she’d said with an air of disbelief when he first suggested signing up for the series. It was only the suggestion that Lamaze practice could be helpful for realism in Vivien Blake’s pregnancy arc that finally convinced her to go along with it. They were scheduled to start the classes the day he returned from New York. The classes they never got to attend.

David Jonathan Rose came into the world 11 weeks and 6 days early (he would spend the rest of his life being fashionably late to compensate), and Johnny wasn’t there. 

To this day, Johnny still isn’t completely clear on how he made it back to LA after the call from Adelina. “Mrs. Rose collapsed on set, and we’re at the hospital. She’s having the baby. Hurry back.”

He remembers walking into her room, seeing his beautiful wife in that hospital bed, attached to wires and tubes and looking so terrifyingly small and frail. He remembers holding her hand, not wanting to let go, never wanting to let go. Johnny couldn’t leave her until he was certain she’d be ok; he needed to know that she would be ok. He stayed by her bedside, oblivious to anything else in the world, until she opened those beautiful eyes and saw him. Until she asked, her voice creaky from disuse, about their son.

Johnny still chokes up when he thinks about it, about how he made the conscious choice to stay with his wife in those first hours, about how he let his son down, leaving him to the care of nurses and doctors in the neonatal ICU several floors away. Sometimes he wonders if that first day back set the tone for his relationship with David, if he set himself up for the distance between them by choosing Moira in that first, traumatic moment. But as painful as it is to remember, even now, Johnny knows, deep down, that it’s a choice he’d make again. As desperately as he loves his children, as thankful as he is to Schitt’s Creek for bringing them closer as a family, he still knows, without a doubt, that Moira comes first. She will always come first.

And maybe it’s because he knows that, because his connection to his wife is so overwhelming, that Johnny feels David’s pain so acutely in this moment. Because he sees himself and Moira in David’s relationship with Patrick. And the thought of something breaking that connection is devastating. Johnny can only imagine what David must be feeling, and even that’s enough to make him tear up. 

After watching his son struggle from a distance for all these years, Johnny can’t help but blame himself for the way David closes himself off from everyone. He’d set the tone for that isolation all those years ago, after all. And the more he’s learned about the details of his children’s lives that he hadn’t been privy to, to hear about the ways that other people had used and broken his son, it just shatters Johnny’s heart a little more.

Because now when he looks at his son, Johnny doesn’t see the haughty, spoiled man who’d snarled as he asked—no, _demanded_—payment for another loft or trip to the Maldives. No, he sees in this aloof man the boy with his mother’s beautiful features and his dad’s uncontrollable eyebrows who would put aside his own introverted anxiety to perform the Number with his mother, year after year. The dutiful brother who apparently traveled the world bailing his sister out of danger he and Moira were blissfuly ignorant of. The man so terrified of rejection that he didn’t want to celebrate any milestones with his smitten young suitor, let alone share those celebrations with his family. 

And now, days after Alexis brought that redhead, Patrick’s fiancée, to the barbecue meant to celebrate David’s relationship, Johnny feels that familiar sense of regret threatening to choke him._Maybe I shouldn’t have forced the matter,_ he thinks to himself. It kills him to see David lying in that old twin bed, day after day, heartbroken, hurting, and knowing that there’s absolutely nothing he can do to fix it.

“Son, are you awake?” Johnny pokes his head through the door between their rooms, barely able to make out the David-shaped lump on the mattress in the darkness.

“Go away,” David’s groan is muffled. As his eyes adjust to the darkness, Johnny can see that David’s curled into a fetal position, a pillow covering his head.

For a moment, Johnny is frozen in place. He’s ready to do what David’s asked of him, leave him to suffer in silent isolation; after all, that’s what David expects. Leaving him alone to handle the emotional things is what Johnny’s done for most of his life. But things are different now in Schitt’s Creek; _they’re _different now.

Johnny makes his way over to the corner of the room. He presses his back to the wall, and slowly slides his way to the floor. “I’m here for you, David. I’m not going away,” he speaks softly. This is new territory for both of them. “You don’t have to say or do anything. I’m just…I’m here. If you need me.”

He sees David shifting under his duvet, his movements hesitant, uncertain. Johnny scoots closer to the bed so that he can rest his arm on the mattress by the pillow. He smooths his palm over the top of David’s head where it’s peeking out from underneath the pillow. He feels David shudder at the touch, his whole body again wracked with sobs.

Johnny continues to stroke David’s hair, and brings his other arm up to pat David’s arm through the duvet, then rest on the mattress. This time, he feels David’s body shifting before a ring-laden hand emerges from his nest of blankets. Johnny reaches down and covers David’s hand with his own.

“I’m here, son. For whatever you need,” he whispers, willing his own voice not to crack as the tears well up in his eyes. “I’m here.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to missgeevious for the prompt, which I kind of took in a way angstier direction than she'd anticipated. Sorry for that, babe. And thanks as always to the drunk girls in the bathroom at the Rosebudd. Find me on tumblr @olivebranchesandredwine if you want to join us!


End file.
